Wednesday, April 06, 2016

Iraq snapshot

Wednesday, April 6, 2016. Chaos and violence continue, the US government wants more US bases in Iraq, Falluja faces a recognized crisis, Haider al-Abadi loses another proposed Cabinet minister, Hillary Clinton laughably accuses someone else of not doing their homework, and so much more.

Hillary Clinton, the Democratic frontrunner, has, together with her
ex-president husband, made over $140 million in the eight years since
the 2008 financial crash. She garnered a substantial portion of this
wealth in speaking fees from major corporations and banks. In the first
15 months after she left her post as secretary of state in 2012, Clinton
received $5 million in speaking fees, putting her squarely in the top
0.1 percent of income earners. Such payouts are, in the world of
American politics, nothing more than a form of legalized bribery.

Greed can be a powerful motivator for staying in a marriage that brings so much public humiliation repeatedly.

Or she maybe just like playing the victim?

Some people do get off on playing the victim.

Strangely, those who make a show out of playing the victim rarely are able to offer real or fake sympathy for actual victims.

Harper Neidig (THE HILL) reports BernieA CBS reporter tweeted that she asked the Vermont senator about
Clinton's calls for him to apologize to Sandy Hook victims because of
his stance against holding gun manufacturers liable for gun crimes.
Sanders reportedly responded by saying that Clinton should apologize to
the victims of the Iraq War, which she voted in favor of as a senator.

Votes have consequences.

Many Iraqis have been killed (over a million), many more have been wounded. Many US troops have been killed, many more wounded.

Hillary, however, has been sitting pretty.

And she doesn't feel for the real victims of the Iraq War, she only feels and frets for herself.

The U.S. military is planning to expand the number of so-called “fire
bases” in northern Iraq to prepare for an assault on Mosul, ISIS’s Iraqi
capital. The bases will be there to support local Iraqi forces. But
they’ll also put U.S. troops near the frontlines of what will likely be
the biggest battle of the war with the self-proclaimed Islamic State.Troops at up to three temporary bases, on the north-south route from
central Iraq to the northern city of Mosul, would advise Iraqi security
forces, provide logistical support so Iraqi troops can move toward Mosul
and even ground base support fire, defense officials told The Daily
Beast.

The Pentagon will consider opening more small military outposts that
would provide artillery support and other aid to Iraqi forces as they
prepare to retake the northern city of Mosul from Islamic State of Iraq
and Syria (ISIS) militants, a senior military officer on the Joint Staff said Wednesday.

And what does Hillary Diane have to say about that?

Nothing.

Because as usual, she hasn't done her homework.

Staying with the Pentagon, the US Defense Dept announced today:

Strikes in IraqAttack, fighter and remotely piloted aircraft conducted 19
strikes in Iraq, coordinated with and in support of Iraq’s government:-- Near Hit, two strikes struck a large ISIL tactical unit and
destroyed six ISIL fighting positions, six ISIL boats, two ISIL
vehicles, an ISIL supply cache, an ISIL medium machine gun and three
ISIL vehicle bombs and denied ISIL access to terrain.-- Near Kirkuk, two strikes struck an ISIL tactical unit and
destroyed an ISIL command and control node, an ISIL bed-down location,
three ISIL assembly areas, an ISIL vehicle bomb and an ISIL machine gun.-- Near Kisik, a strike destroyed an ISIL fighting position.-- Near Mosul, seven strikes struck five separate ISIL tactical
units, an ISIL financial storage center and an ISIL headquarters and
destroyed two ISIL supply caches, two ISIL vehicles, an ISIL command and
control node and three ISIL assembly areas.-- Near Qayyarah, a strike struck an ISIL tactical unit.-- Near Sinjar, two strikes struck an ISIL tactical unit and destroyed an ISIL supply cache and three ISIL assembly areas.-- Near Sultan Abdallah, three strikes struck an ISIL tactical
unit and destroyed an ISIL vehicle bomb, two ISIL fighting positions,
six ISIL assembly areas, an ISIL vehicle, two ISIL mortar systems and an
ISIL tunnel system.-- Near Tal Afar, a strike suppressed an ISIL tactical unit.

Task force officials define a strike as one or more kinetic
events that occur in roughly the same geographic location to produce a
single, sometimes cumulative, effect. Therefore, officials explained, a
single aircraft delivering a single weapon against a lone ISIL vehicle
is one strike, but so is multiple aircraft delivering dozens of weapons
against buildings, vehicles and weapon systems in a compound, for
example, having the cumulative effect of making those targets harder or
impossible for ISIL to use. Accordingly, officials said, they do not
report the number or type of aircraft employed in a strike, the number
of munitions dropped in each strike, or the number of individual
munition impact points against a target.

And DoD's Teri Moon Crock states, "The U.S.-led coalition is making significant progress in the
campaign to defeat the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant, despite
facing a long road ahead, the Joint Staff’s senior official who oversees
the U.S. military’s daily global operations told Pentagon reporters
today."

Human Rights Watch is sounding alarms over Falluja:Residents of the besieged city of Fallujah are starving. Iraqi
government forces should urgently allow aid to enter the city, and the
extremist group Islamic State, also known as ISIS, which captured the
city in early 2014, should allow civilians to leave. “The people of Fallujah are besieged by the government, trapped by ISIS, and are starving,” said Joe Stork, deputy Middle East director. “The warring parties should make sure that aid reaches the civilian population.” Since government forces recaptured nearby Ramadi, the capital of
Anbar governorate, in late December 2015, and the al-Jazira desert area
north of Fallujah in March 2016, they have cut off supply routes into
the city, three Iraqi officials said. Tens of thousands of civilians
from an original population of more than 300,000 remain inside the city. Human Rights Watch has not had access to Fallujah, and it is very
difficult to get information from the remaining residents because ISIS
prohibits the use of mobile phones and the Internet. Residents sometimes
manage to catch a cell tower signal at night and are able to respond to
some messages, including several that Human Rights Watch relayed via
rights activists in Baghdad. Human Rights Watch was recently able to
speak with one person in Fallujah and to seven others from the area who
are in contact with people there. Iraqi activists who are in touch with Fallujah families said that
people were reduced to eating flat bread made with flour from ground
date seeds and soups made from grass. What little food remains is being
sold at exorbitant prices. A 50-kilogram sack of flour goes for US$750,
and a bag of sugar for $500, whereas in Baghdad, 70 kilometers to the
east, the same amount of flour costs $15 and of sugar $40, one Fallujah
resident said. In late March 2016, a Fallujah medical source told Human
Rights Watch that each day starving children arrive at the local
hospital and that most foodstuffs are no longer available at any price. An Iraqi official in touch with some Fallujah families provided
Human Rights Watch with a list of 140 people, many elderly and young
children, whom the official said had died over the past few months from
lack of food and medicine. The official did not want the names of the
dead published for fear that ISIS, which prohibits contacting people
outside the city, would punish relatives of the dead. A new campaign,
“Fallujah Is Being Killed by Starvation,” has sought to draw attention
to the impact of the siege. In one recent video that Baghdad-based
activists provided to Human Rights Watch, an unidentifiable woman says
she is from Fallujah and that her children are dying because there is no
rice, no flour – not even local dates – and the hospital has run out of
baby food.

The Facebook account “Fallujah is my city” (“فلوجة مدينتي”) posted a video
on March 23, 2016, showing several lifeless bodies in a body of water.
Baghdad-based activists said that it shows a mother who drowned herself
and her two children because she could not find food. Another activist
from Fallujah, now based in Iraqi Kurdistan, corroborated this account
based on information from relatives still in Fallujah.

Iraq's prime minister has had little to say about Falluja since September 2014 when he lied to the press and declared that he had called off the bombing of Falluja's residential areas (the next day, the bombing continued and it has ever since).

While the corporate western media has ignored this pushback, Haider can't.

Hence the interview with MEM.

In the interview, Haider insists that none of it his fault or, for that matter, his idea.

The puppet insists that he did what he did because he was being
threatened by Shi'ite cleric and movement leader Moqtada al-Sadr.

Abadi
has been accused of undermining democracy and “leading a coup” against
Iraq’s power-sharing political structure that has been in place since
2003, which guarantees a certain number of political positions to the
country’s Shia, Sunni and Kurdish blocs.But
Abadi told Middle East Eye in a phone interview that rival political
blocs had not responded to his request for them to nominate their
preferred independent candidates for cabinet posts last month.He
also said that the call for an independent cabinet had come from
Moqtada al-Sadr, the influential Shia cleric who last week threatened to
raid Baghdad’s fortified Green Zone unless his demands for political reform were met.[. . .]“It
was Sadr who demanded a government of technocrats, in which everyone is
independent except for the prime minister. It was not my demand.”

Moqtaqda made him do it.That's what Haider's now insisting of what he had only previously been maintaining was his great effort to fight corruption.

The United States
and Iran have formed an unlikely tacit alliance behind Iraq's prime
minister as he challenges the ruling elite with plans for a
non-political cabinet to fight corruption undermining the OPEC nation's
economic and political stability.Local
calls for Haider al-Abadi's removal -- including one by his predecessor
as prime minister Nuri al-Maliki -- had been growing as he pursued a
reshuffle aimed at addressing graft, which became a major issue after
oil prices collapsed in 2014 and strained the government's finances as
it launched a costly campaign against Islamic State.

This is not about reforms.

It's never been about reforms.

For Iran, it's about weakening Sunnis. And it's the knowledge that as
long as Iraq's unstable, Iran benefits. For the US, it's about pushing
through the economic 'reforms' it's long wanted. Ending subsidies to
the Iraqi people, changing the economic system, controlling the oil.

Yes, that oil and natural gas law that the US has been pushing. Bully
Boy Bush pushed it, Barack pushes it. And it's still never gotten
anywhere.

Iran and the US remain in bed together, pillow talking ways to keep Iraq unsteady and in need of 'help.'

At today's US State Dept press briefing today, spokesperson Mark C. Toner was asked about the report.

QUESTION: -- on Iraq? Okay.MR TONER: Yes.QUESTION: Are you aware of efforts last week to basically
force Haider Abadi, the prime minister of Iraq, out of office because he
wants to introduce or re-introduce a number of new ministers and so on
to fight corruption, and that in fact, in that effort, you and the
Iranians work together to prevent such a movement by certain coalitions
within the government? Are you aware of that?

MR TONER: That we work with Iranians?

QUESTION: Yes, yeah.

MR TONER: I’m not aware of that.
QUESTION: That you and – whether directly or indirectly, you and Iran work to prop up Haider Abadi, the prime minister of Iraq.
MR TONER: I’m not aware of that. I mean, as I think we already
said, we do support his reform efforts. Frankly, this is an internal
matter, though, for the Iraqi Government. But I don’t have anything to
specifically talk about any kind of collaboration we may have carried
out with the Iranians. I just don’t have any --

QUESTION: Okay. But all reports suggest that --

MR TONER: I haven’t seen those reports.

QUESTION: -- there was actually a list of 14 new members that
he’s shared with you on a possible replacement for existing ministers
and so on. Can you confirm or deny or --

About Me

We do not open attachments. Stop e-mailing them. Threats and abusive e-mail are not covered by any privacy rule. This isn't to the reporters at a certain paper (keep 'em coming, they are funny). This is for the likes of failed comics who think they can threaten via e-mails and then whine, "E-mails are supposed to be private." E-mail threats will be turned over to the FBI and they will be noted here with the names and anything I feel like quoting.
This also applies to anyone writing to complain about a friend of mine. That's not why the public account exists.